Engine-driven generators are known, which includes a cooling fan disposed on one side (hereinafter referred to as “front side”) of an engine and an exhaust muffler disposed on an opposite side (hereinafter referred to as “rear side”) of the engine such that the engine and the exhaust muffler are cooled by cooling air fed from the cooling fan. More specifically, the engine (more particularly, a cylinder block thereof) is cooled by the cooling air fed from the cooling fan, and the exhaust muffler is cooled by the cooling air after having cooled the engine. A typical example of such known engine-driven generators is disclosed in WO2008/032414.
In the engine-driven generator disclosed in WO2008/032414, the cooling fan is provided on the front side of the engine and the exhaust muffler is provided on the rear side of the engine. With this arrangement, the exhaust muffler projects rearwardly from the engine and the thus projecting exhaust muffler constitutes a hindrance to downsizing of the engine-driven generator.
As a means for performing downsizing of the engine-driven generator, it may be considered that the exhaust muffler is disposed on a lateral side of the engine in such a manner as to extend in a front-and-rear direction of the engine. However, if the exhaust muffler is disposed on the lateral side of the engine, a cylinder block of the engine and the exhaust muffler will be arranged in lateral juxtaposition. With this arrangement, it is difficult to perform a cooling operation in which the cylinder block is cooled by cooling air and the exhaust muffler is cooled by the cooling air after having cooled the cylinder block in the same manner as done for the engine-driven generator disclosed in WO2008/032414. To deal with this difficulty, some creative ideas are required to perform proper cooling of both of the cylinder block and the exhaust muffler concurrently by cooling air fed by the cooling fan.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an engine-driven generator which is capable of achieving down-sizing of the engine-driven generator while securing proper cooling of a cylinder block and an exhaust muffler.